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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Rapid and Rapacious?

We wouldn't try to walk guns into Syria to find out how jihadis are getting them, would we?

This is interesting:

The Interior Ministry said thieves broke into a warehouse and stole a huge amount of firearms and ammunition. The ministry said 20,000 U.S.-origin M-16 assault rifles and 15,000 rounds for 9mm pistols were stolen.

I'm just joking. This isn't a Middle East version of Fast and Furious.

As an Instapundit reader noted to the professor:

They likely weren’t stolen, they were backdoor transferred to a local ally in exchange for transferring Soviet made guns to Libya or Syria rebels.

That sounds about right. Given the potential for al Qaeda or Iranian-supported terrorists to cause problems with that kind of arsenal, I'd be shocked if security was that lax for 20K rifles. It's not impossible, of course. But I would be shocked.

And we do want non-jihadis in Syria to get arms. The non-jihadis have a tough road ahead--toppling Assad and then defeating their allies of convenience in al Qaeda who are also trying to topple Assad.